Technology Simplified: The Fork Experience

11Sep

You gotta love technology, computers, gadgets. Anything with an electronic chip embedded anywhere in it is automatically my best friend. My phone is an HTC, one of the best phone brands in the world currently. Says the rebel. It is an HTC Touch Pro. A great work of art. I’ve had it for 3 years and some (by my calculation, that’s 90 years in human years). Lately, it has been falling apart piece by piece. It’s only natural with gadgets. One fall too many and it begins to give way. I must confess that I have used that phone well. And I mean well! At first half the screen wouldn’t respond to any form of stimuli from either the stylus or my finger. Only recently, a little perspiration found its way in between the screens it and has decided to stay forever. I’ve let it out to dry it out in the sun. Nothing. It just won’t budge. I’ve been trying to do it small-small until I save up enough cash for my iPhone! (Yes, I’m also a Macaddict) but the phone is showing me paaaaa.

I figured since I had a slide QWERTY losing the screen wouldn’t be a big deal. I was wrong! Just because it has a slide out QWERTY keyboard doesn’t mean it does magic tricks.

As a result of my inability to communicate with the phone through its screen, some annoying pop up keeps…popping up and I can’t get it to stop. At least once every minute it pops up, draining my battery juice. So I decided to lock the phone to get rid of the sounds it makes, at the very least. I did that and it worked. All I need it to do to regain control of my phone is to simply eject the stylus from its slot. It unlocks the phone granting me access to a little bit of the phone. So in essence with a locked phone minus stylus, equals useless phone. It might as well be a 6-inched hollow brick.

Now here’s what happened.

Long story short, I lost the stylus while the phone was locked. For four full frustrating days, I was unable to access any feature on the phone, save answering calls. I tried every trick I could come up with and I just gave up.

My Eureka! moment came at dinner one evening when a friend feeling the pain of my frustration suggested that I try her stylus. I didn’t think it would work ‘cos it was way bigger than mine, but it did. Surprisingly. Later I decided to try a toothpick. That too worked! Laughable. I know. Still bemused by these facts, I decided to try my fork and by goodness it worked!!! I could not believe it. I cracked up. It was too funny. I had spent hours moping over this for nothing. A fork. A fork. Can you imagine? A fork? I laughed so hard my face was contorted. Out of all the possible options the answer was in a piece of crockery. was all that was it took to unlock a sophisticated windows mobile device! Think about precious days I went by all the seconds and minutes I spent behind the phone trying to figure out a way to troubleshoot this snag with the most complicated of tact and skill.

I have uploaded a video demonstration for your viewing pleasure. By all means have a laugh.